Tuesday, July 8

The McCain Boys

John McCain's Sons

"Talk about putting your most valuable where your mouth is! Apparently this was not 'newsworthy'enough for the media to comment about. Can either of the other presidential candidates truthfully come close to this? ... Just a question for each of us to seek an answer, and not a statement.

"You see...character is what's shown when the public is not looking. There were no cameras or press invited to what you are about to read about, and the story comes from one person in New Hampshire

"One evening last July, Senator John McCain of Arizona arrived at the New Hampshire home of Erin Flanagan for sandwiches, chocolate-chip cookies and a heartfelt talk about Iraq . They had met at a presidential debate, when she asked the candidates what they would do to bring home American soldiers - - soldiers like her brother, who had been killed in action a few months earlier.

"Mr. McCain did not bring cameras or press. Instead, he brought his youngest son, James McCain, 19, then a private first class in the Marine Corps about to leave for Iraq . Father and son sat down to hear more about Ms. Flanagan's brother Michael Cleary, a 24-year-old Army First Lieutenant killed by an ambush ... a roadside bomb.

"No one mentioned the obvious: In just days, Jimmy McCain could face similar perils.. 'I can't imagine what it must have been like for them as they were coming to meet with a family that .....' Ms. Flanagan recalled, choking up. 'We lost a dear one,' she finished.

"Sen.. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has staked his candidacy on the promise that American troops can bring stability to Iraq . What he almost never says is that one of them is his own son, who spent seven months patrolling Anbar Province and learned of his father's New Hampshire victory in January while he was digging a stuck military vehicle out of the mud.

"Two of Jimmy's three older brothers went into the military. Doug McCain, 48, was a Navy pilot. Jack McCain, 21, is to graduate from the Naval Academy next year, raising the chances that his father, if elected, could become the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower with a son at war."